Juan Negrín

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Juan Negrín López (3 February 1887 - 12 November 1956) was a Spanish politician and physician.

Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, he became a university professor of physiology, and was named Minister of Finance in September 1936 in the government of Francisco Largo Caballero.

League of Nations. Eighteenth Assembly, Opening of the eighteenth plenary of the General Assembly by Juan Negrín (Spain). Geneva, 1937

In May 1937, Manuel Azaña (after Largo was dismissed) named Negrín President of the Government, with the hope of fortifying the central power front against largely independent armed labor unions and Anarchists, thus curtailing the revolution in Republican Spain in order to create a state capable of simultaneously defeating Francisco Franco's rebel army and win the sympathy of progressive Catholics and members of the middle class who were revolted by the political and social oppression of the Republican Government, starting in 1935. All this was intended to connect the Spanish conflict with World War II, which he believed to be imminent, although the Munich Agreement definitively made all hope of outside aid vanish.

On the military level he sent a series of offensives (at Brunete, Belchite, Teruel and the one on the Ebro). Although Negrín had always been on the centrist faction of the PSOE, he worked closely together with the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), who at that point directed their forces towards the Popular Front line.

One of the most controversial aspects of Negrín's government was its deep infiltration by the PCE, leading his critics - on both the Spanish left and right - to accuse him of being a puppet for the eventual establishment of a Stalinist communist state. The collapse of his government against the onslaught of Franco's forces meant that the possible future nature of the Spanish Republic would remain a historical mystery. Negrín was forced to rely on the Communists to curtail the excesses of the Anarchist wing of the Spanish Left, and forced to rely on the Soviet Union, then led by Joseph Stalin, for weapons and armament.

The military situation of the Spanish Republic deteriorated steadily under Negrín's government, largely because of the superior quality of the opposing generals and officers who were largely veterans of the Rif War. Before the fall of Catalonia he proposed, in the meeting of the Cortes in Figueres, capitulation with the sole condition of respecting the lives of the vanquished, but on not having been able to reach this goal, he moved in February 1939 to the I Central Zone with the intention of achieving the evacuation with the same success with which it had been performed in Catalonia^{[citation needed]}.

However, Colonel Segismundo Casado later joined by José Miaja, tired of fighting which they regarded then as hopeless and seeking better surrender terms, finally deposed Negrín, and this rebellion frustrated the latter's last plan^{[citation needed]}. Although the PCE started a mutiny in Madrid with the aim of re-establishing Negrín's leadership, José Miaja retained control and the republicans capitulated soon after.

Unlike Spanish President Manuel Azaña, Negrín remained in Spain until the final collapse of the Republican front. He organized the S.E.R.E. to help republican exiles, and died in Paris.